


For the King

by moonlighten



Series: For King and Country [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Rivals to Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fantasy, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Royalty, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Undercover as a Couple, Wizards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25995430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlighten/pseuds/moonlighten
Summary: The Otherworld has been poisoned, and mages Florian De Courcy and Jack Rayner must find a way of healing it without the use of their magic.Before anything else, they need to infiltrate the royal palace in Eboracum. Jack has formulated a plan to accomplish this, but it's one that will test their uneasy truce to its limits.
Relationships: Court Mage/Former Rival Court Mage, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: For King and Country [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662775
Comments: 61
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

"No, I won't do it," De Courcy says, slamming his hands down flat on top of the desk to emphasise the words. The desk judders along with the impact – pens jump, papers scatter, and a small wave of tea overflows the rim of Jack's mug, splattering against his sleeve. "I refuse. You're going to have to come up with a different plan."

De Courcy catapults himself up from his chair and stalks out of the office, the tails of his frockcoat fluttering behind him in such an overly dramatic fashion that Jack would have suspected he'd employed a touch of magic if he didn't know better. Not even De Courcy would risk making himself ill just to ensure his aggrieved exit was suitably theatrical. Surely.

Elizabeth Cooper, Princess Bethan's private secretary, gapes at the door De Courcy flounced through and then turns in her seat to settle her wide-eyed disbelief upon Jack. "I know you warned me, but I wasn't expecting him to react quite _that_ badly," she says. "If we give him time to get over the shock and calm down, do you think he'll reconsider?"

"Maybe," Jack says, with more confidence than he truly feels. De Courcy is apparently still seething over Jack thinking he was a bit prissy when they were ten, which does not bespeak a forgiving, phlegmatic temper. "I could get Charlie to have a word with him, if you like; try and talk him round. They're good friends, and De Courcy might listen to _him_."

"Would you, Jack, please?" Elizabeth says. "That'd be a great help to us."

She looks so grateful that Jack feels guilty for the deception, but not quite guilty enough to recant his words and admit that he was lying and vastly overstating the degree of his brother's influence over De Courcy. He's been sitting in the cramped, airless office for so long this evening that the lattice pattern of his wickerwork chair is likely indelibly imprinted across his arse and he needs to get up and get moving before he loses all feeling in his legs. Without De Courcy there, they won't be able to get anything productive done, anyway, so it's not as though he'll be leaving Elizabeth in the lurch.

He springs to his feet, offers her a bow, and says, "I'll go and talk to him straight away."

In the hallway outside the office, De Courcy is nowhere to be seen, but there are several telling signs of his passing: the scuffed marks of hurried and heavy footsteps marring the finish of the recently polished floor; a door left slightly ajar; and Charlie, standing at the bottom of the staircase which leads up to the servants' quarters, looking agitated.

"Florian just stormed right past me without even saying hello," he says when Jack joins him. "I take it your meeting didn't go well. What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it here," Jack says. He assumes De Courcy wouldn't want their private affairs to be discussed out in the open, where they were in danger of being overheard by a passing servant or some other member of Princess Bethan's household. Jack certainly doesn't. "Let's go to your room."

Like the royal hunting lodge Caerwyn has claimed as his own, the summer palace is a relic of the Roman occupation, built by a rich Lusitanian merchant who made use of it for a fortnight every other year when forced by matters of business to endure a visit to Vinovia. According to contemporaneous accounts, he had hated Northern Britannia: the climate didn't agree with him, and he'd thought the local Britons to be brusque, unfriendly, and dull. He'd spent a not inconsiderable portion of his vast fortune creating this opulent jewel of a manor house as a retreat and consolation for having to spend time in the area.

The bedroom Bethan has assigned Charlie has a fresco painted upon its high ceiling depicting a bright sunlit sky filled with plump, laughing cherubs frolicking amongst the wispy clouds. They spill out on to the carved plaster cornice beneath, where they join intricately moulded birds, flowers, and vines trailing leaves onto the stucco walls below. The floor is tiled in pink marble, and smooth, rounded, structurally useless columns of the same stone stand at each corner of the room, holding up nothing at all.

It's the sort of room that's meant to be admired as a work of art and not lived in, but Charlie has already added a few incongruous, homely touches in the week he's been using it which makes it seem more like his own and not quite so much like a museum piece.

The delicately embroidered bedcover is gone, replaced by the luridly coloured patchwork quilt their maternal grandfather made for Charlie's tenth birthday, and he's ferreted out two timeworn leather armchairs from somewhere, set now in front of the fire in place of the intricately carved and incredibly uncomfortable wooden chairs he had inherited along with the room.

The white marble and gilt fireplace itself has been defiled by a hook screwed into the side of the brick firebox, from which a smoke-blackened iron kettle is hanging.

To two earthenware mugs, Charlie adds pinches of tea from the battered tin on the mantel, boiling water from the kettle, and generous spoonfuls honey. To his own mug alone, he adds a splash of whisky from a bottle with a far better pedigree than the rotgut he's taken to drinking of late – proof positive that Rob's well and truly back on his feet again and taking better care of Charlie than Charlie ever does of himself.

When Jack and Charlie were younger, their ma used to make them tea with honey and whisky whenever needed warming up, were under the weather, or their nerves were rattled. No matter how well it worked, Jack never much cared for the concoction and hasn't partaken of any in years.

"Can you put some of that in mine, too?" he asks anyway, because it feels like a small act of defiance.

Caerwyn had disapproved of alcohol in general, spirits in particular, and Jack drinking any of it most of all. He disapproved of many things about Jack that he thought were vulgar or unseemly: his love of bawdy operettas and low-brow tales of adventure and romance, his habit of hanging on to his clothes for years on end and wearing them until they fall apart, and even his laugh, which Caerwyn called braying, overloud, and uncouth. 

Jack probably should have realised that he's a dickhead years ago, but then he's never been particularly clear-eyed when it comes to love.

Charlie raises an eyebrow at his request but doesn't question it. He pours a large measure of whisky into Jack's tea and then they settle themselves into the armchairs with their mugs in hand.

"So," Charlie says, "I'm guessing Florian didn't think much of your plan, then."

"He hates it," Jack says. "Categorically refuses to go along with it."

"Well, that might be for the best," Charlie says, avoiding Jack's eyes by staring resolutely down into the depths of his mug. "Given how you feel about him."

"How I _used_ to feel about him," Jack says firmly.

Charlie snorts. "You've been mooning over him again, Jack."

"I have not," Jack says, affronted. "I might have cast the odd appreciative glance his way, but then he's an attractive man. And I've noticed you doing the same. You had a crush on him at school, too."

"Aye, a _crush_ ," Charlie says. "That's all it was. I wasn't the one who claimed he was the 'love of my life', or said he was an 'angel come to earth'."

From the moment he stopped being a wriggling bundle of incessant squalling and noxious smells and learnt how to talk, Charlie has been Jack's best friend and, as an adult, his near-constant companion. For the most part, Jack is glad to have him there, always at his side, because Charlie knows him inside out, back to front, and understands him better than anyone else ever has. 

But that intimate knowledge and all those years of intertwined history are a double-edged sword. Charlie may be his closest confidant and staunchest ally, but he has also borne witness to and remembers periods of Jack's life that Jack has tried his very best to forget.

First and foremost amongst them, the autumn when he was nineteen, had just discovered absinthe, and felt as though he was the only person in the world who had ever truly had their heart broken.

For almost a month following his graduation from the College and concurrent separation from De Courcy, he spent the majority of his days roaming aimlessly about the countryside, wallowing in his own misery. But brooding on the moors wasn't as romantic in reality as it was described to be in books – it was much more boring, for a start, and when the temperature plummeted and the rain set in as winter approached, it became much more impractical, too.

Jack confined his brooding to his bed thereafter, swigging absinthe from the bottle whilst he obsessively reread the journals he had kept when he was at school and still foolishly, pathetically hopeful that he might happen across just the right thing to say or do that would make De Courcy like him someday.

Ma fretted about his uncharacteristic lethargy, but once she'd checked him over and ascertained that he wasn't suffering from a physical illness or true melancholia, she ceded him into his da's care. Ma is endlessly patient with the sick and the ailing, renowned for her wonderful bedside manner, but she's completely at sea when it comes to delicate, emotional matters. When Jack didn't immediately perk up upon being reminded that 'time is a great healer' and that there were 'plenty more fish in the sea', she was at a loss as to what more she could do for him.

Da sat at Jack's bedside for more hours at a time than bore thinking about, listening to him spew all sorts of raddled, sentimental nonsense – Charlie, too, when he came home from school for the Yule holidays.

The comment about angels certainly sounds like something Jack would have said then, even though he can't remember doing so now. His memories of that time are faded and hazy, discoloured not by the rosy hue of nostalgia but the blood-red taint of mortification.

"Aye, well, that was a long time ago," Jack says. "I've learnt better since then. He clearly doesn't like me, and I'm not sure I like him very much half the time, either. There's no chance I'm ever going to fall for him again."

Infuriatingly, Charlie appears unconvinced. "You say that now…"

"I say that always," Jack insists. "I'm not going to put myself through all that for a second time, Charlie."

Charlie looks set to remonstrate further, but Jack is sick of talking about his past with De Courcy – they've returned to the subject far too often for his liking since De Courcy stumbled back into their lives – so he offers up Mayhew as a distraction, asking whether he had any interesting news to share when Charlie talked to him earlier that day.

As his brother and Mayhew are so much alike in many ways, Jack had thought that they might repel each other like the north poles of two magnets when brought too close together, but they have instead become fast friends during the week they've spent in the summer palace. 

Though he's just as much a newcomer as the rest of them, Mayhew seems to have met, befriended, and learnt the life stories of just about everyone in Bethan's household, and is a ceaseless font of gossip regarding them, so Charlie always has plenty to say on the topic.

Charlie eagerly latches onto this fresh tangent and chatters on for the best part of an hour whilst Jack half-listens to him and drinks his doctored tea and thereafter unadulterated whisky.

It probably wasn't his best idea – he doesn't have a head for spirits anymore and when he reaches the bottom of his mug for a second time, he's woozy and longing for his bed. Even though it's not quite nine o'clock, he makes his excuses to Charlie and heads up to his own room. 

It's even fancier than Charlie's – so much so that Jack scarcely dare touch anything for fear of leaving dirty fingerprints on it or breaking some fiddly bit of ornamentation, and he spends as little time as possible there as a consequence.

Still, the fire in its ostentatious hearth is warm and the bed is deep and soft, so it's still a comfortable place to lay his head down for a spell in between the seemingly endless rounds of planning meetings with Bethan, her advisors, and occasionally, De Courcy.

Jack removes his coat and carefully hangs it up in the wardrobe – the chair he would normally use for the purpose in any other room looks far too fragile to bear its weight – and has just started unbuttoning his waistcoat when a diffident knock sounds at the door.

Expecting his visitor to be Charlie, burning with the need to tell him the details of some small scandal or other he'd forgotten to pass on earlier, Jack doesn't stir himself to answer until the rhythm of the knocking shifts from tentative to imperious.

De Courcy sweeps past him when he finally opens the door, apparently so perturbed by the wait that his usual, etiquette-book-perfect politeness has deserted him. 

He heads straight for the horrible straight-backed and overstuffed armchair by the side of Jack's bed and plonks himself down onto it. There seated, he crosses his legs and uncrosses them, tucks his hair behind his ears, smooths his hands down his lapels, and then starts tapping the heel of one boot against the floor, presumably for the lack of anything better to occupy him.

It's rare to see him completely still. Even when he was absorbed in his work at school, he'd be fiddling with the lid of his pen, drumming his fingers against the top of his desk, or, more often than not, nibbling at the side of his thumb because his ma had got after him for biting his nails but he still needed to gnaw on something to aid his concentration, seemingly.

Because they were a couple of little scrotes, Rhys and Jack used to laugh at him behind his back for the habit, calling him a baby who still needed to suck his thumb. Jack had grown out of finding it funny by eleven, and by fifteen, he found it so mesmerising that it distracted him from his own work and he could only ever study wherever De Courcy wasn't.

He seems to have broken the habit now. Though he does lift one hand to his face, he just touches his thumb to the corner of his mouth before dropping his arm to rest against the chair's.

He recrosses his legs and then says, "I apologise for leaving our meeting so abruptly earlier. I'm afraid your suggestion took me by surprise, and I… Well, I've been thinking on it a little more and I'm still not convinced it would work."

"But we _know_ nothing else will," Jack says with a sigh. They've been over this so many times these past few days but De Courcy still seems set and determined to doubt it. "Bethan doesn't have enough soldiers to take the royal palace by force. If you took me to Dafydd as a prisoner, I'd be locked up and wouldn't be able to help you investigate the circle.

"And no-one would believe I switched to Dafydd's side just because I fancied a change of prince. It's common knowledge amongst the nobility that I hate visiting his court and don’t like him much better. I need a pressing reason to be there, De Courcy."

"No-one would believe what you're proposing of me, either, Rayner," De Courcy says. "It goes against what His Highness' court know of my habits and my… my nature."

"I take it you're not usually one for blokes," Jack says. He'd wondered – worried – about that a lot when they were younger, but there'd never seemed much point in asking.

De Courcy looks surprised, as though that objection had never occurred to him. "Ah, no; it's not that which would be the issue..."

"More of a love 'em and leave 'em type, then," Jack guesses. He wouldn't have suspected it of De Courcy, who had never given anyone so much as a coy glance at school, but then people do change, as De Courcy himself is so fond of saying.

De Courcy purses his lips briefly, evidently disapproving of Jack's wording. "I'm certainly not known for my lengthy relationships," he says. "Why would this fictional one be any different?"

"Because we were at school together; could have childhood sweethearts, for all any of the court knows, who were cruelly separated by their conflicting loyalties to feuding brothers. But then were thrown together again by chance, our feelings were rekindled, and we couldn't bear the thought of being parted again." 

The words roll with embarrassing ease from Jack's tongue, because it's exactly the sort of ludicrous, starry-eyed fantasy he used to dream up when he was younger. His face flushes with heat but, thankfully, De Courcy doesn't seem to have noticed.

"That might work," he says thoughtfully. "And I must admit that I haven't been able to formulate any better plans of effecting your entry to court myself."

"So, we're going to do it, then?" Jack asks.

"Just as long as you're not expecting this to be something more than a pretence, Rayner," De Courcy says, glowering at Jack warningly.

"Don’t worry, I'm long past that sort of thing," Jacks says. "I promise you, we're just going to play-acting."

De Courcy still doesn't look particularly happy about the idea – then again, Jack isn't either, he's just had a little longer to resign himself to it – but he does eventually capitulate and say, "I suppose I don't have any choice but to agree."

"Then I've got something for you," Jack says. "I thought it'd add verisimilitude."

He fishes the wooden ring out of his trouser pocket and holds it out towards De Courcy on the flat palm of his hand. It's a simple little thing, made of plain polished oak – nothing like the fanciful designs Jack used to sketch in his journals.

De Courcy blinks down at the ring, and then up at Jack's face, clearly baffled. "Is that a courtship ring, Rayner?" he asks, his voice straining with incredulity.

"I wouldn't switch allegiances and go haring off after you just for a roll in the hay, De Courcy," Jack says. "I'd want a bit of commitment first."

Years ago, whenever Jack imagined a moment like this, there were clouds of conjured rose petals, butterflies, or some other twee, fluttering creation in the air, De Courcy looked thrilled, and he accepted him with a kiss. Things always took a turn in an earthier direction from there, but all Jack's daydreams about De Courcy did in those days.

He'd certainly never imagined De Courcy glaring at the ring as though it's a piece of dog shit he's been proffered, but then times change just like people do. Nowadays, he wouldn't have anticipated any other reaction than this, had he allowed himself to dwell on it beforehand. 

"So, what do you say, De Courcy?" Jack says. "Do you want to enter into pretend courtship with me?"

De Courcy heaves a gusty sigh, then plucks the ring from Jack's hand with the very tips of his thumb and index finger.

"If I must," he says.


	2. Chapter 2

The summer palace's grounds do not echo the Continental magnificence of the manor house itself but instead follow a purely Brittonic design.

An acres-wide swathe of neatly clipped grass sweeps down from the rear of the building towards a lake bordered by clumps of spiky bulrushes and willow trees draping the tips of their long, pendulous branches into the placid blue-green waters below. 

Overlooking the lake, nestled between small groves of other native trees – aspen and beech, oak and elder – stands a folly built to resemble a temple dedicated to the ancient Brittonic dragon god, Oserc, though it is notably lacking the encircling moat filled with the blood of sacrificial animals which had been the most distinctive feature that marked his places of worship. Here, it has been reenvisaged as a pleasant pavilion, perfectly situated for a weary wanderer about this manufactured slice of idealised nature to sit and take their tea and a breather whilst admiring the full verdant vista of the garden.

Or to swig cider, apparently.

Charlie's Second, Rob, is sprawling, loose-limbed, upon one of the wrought iron benches set in the shade of the sandstone rotunda engraved with stylised flames and made-up runes, taking huge gulping swallows of the stuff straight from the bottle like a man deeply parched. Which he most likely is – his thin shirt and trousers are wringing with sweat and his shiny damp face is almost as red as his hair.

"High Mage!" he calls out, saluting Jack with the half-empty bottle as he draws near. 

"I'm not High Mage anymore, Rob," Jack says. Not that he ever really was. Not officially, because the position wasn't one that it was within Caerwyn's power to bestow. It was just another insult, meant to provoke Dafydd from afar. Jack knew that and proudly used the title anyway, which likely made him just as petty as his prince. "Mage Rayner will do. Or, you know, Jack."

"You'll always be High Mage in my heart." Rob presses his free hand flat against his chest and flutters his eyelashes at Jack. "Anyway, you've just missed the show." 

"Aye? Was it a good one?"

"Sadly not. I'm afraid I rather humiliated myself, but then Fox showed me no mercy even though I've only just left my sick bed."

"You told me you wanted to get back to training as normal," Fox says. She's seated on the bench opposite Rob and, in sharp contrast to him, looks as though she's just taken a pleasant stroll about the grounds. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks lightly wind-kissed, but her own shirt and trousers are pristine and unrumpled. "If you needed me to go easy on you, you should have said."

"Well, I'll know better for tomorrow now, won't I," Rob says. "If I can even move tomorrow, that is." He shifts his legs, drawing them a little closer together, and then groans dramatically. "I feel like I've been put through a mangle."

"Do you think you can make it back to the house under your power?" Jack asks. "I'd like a word with Fox in private. But if you do need a hand, I can—"

"I'm sure I can manage," Rob says, waving aside Jack's offer of help half-made. He struggles to his feet and then grabs up his scabbarded sword, which he holds by the pommel, point-down, and leans his weight against it as though it's a walking stick. "You stay here and talk to Fox. I'll see you both inside."

Fox watches Rob hobble away until he's moved out of earshot and then asks, "What's wrong?"

"De Courcy. Again," Jack says. "He's decided you should stay here instead of coming with us to the palace."

"What? Why?"

"Well, he's come up with this whole story he's going to spin for Dafydd about how we had to leave everything behind when we made our daring midnight escape from Caerwyn's clutches. Including you, apparently. He says it'll add _verisimilitude_. I think he's just punishing me for the whole courtship thing."

"And what about Mayhew?" Fox asks. "Is he going to be staying here, too?"

"Naw, De Courcy's insisting he has to come along, even though Dafydd thinks he's dead and won't be expecting him. He probably just needs someone to lay out his nightshirts and run his baths for him and doesn't fancy doing without."

"Are you going to go along with it?"

"I pretty much have to," Jack says apologetically. "De Courcy's really not happy with the whole plan and I get the impression he's looking for any old excuse to back out of it. I'm not going to give him one. Doesn't mean I like it, though."

"I don't either, Jack," Fox says, frowning. "What if he just wants to get you on your own? If I'm not there to guard your back, he might just take the opportunity to slip a knife in it."

"He wouldn't," Jack says. "He needs me to help him look into what's going on with the palace's circle, if nothing else. Besides, I know he's not fond of me, but I don't think he actively _hates_ me."

"Are you sure?" Fox's frown deepens. "I thought you said he called you his nemesis?"

It had just been the once, and De Courcy vomited all over Jack's feet immediately afterwards. Even swept up in the first, heady rush of love, Jack hadn't been able to contrive a way to find that particular aspect of De Courcy's behaviour charming – as he did everything else about him – but it did inspire him towards tender pity. He helped De Courcy to bed and divested him of his boots, and was considering whether it would be too much of an imposition to smooth back his hair and mop his clammy brow when Rhys stumbled into their dorm room and found him still dithering at De Courcy's bedside, whereupon Jack jumped back and made a big, noisy production out of being outraged over his ruined shoes in the hopes of distracting Rhys from any suspicious conclusions he might otherwise be forming.

"Aye, but he was utterly wankered at the time," Jack says. "Also, we were fifteen. Hopefully, he's got over it by now."

Fox nods vaguely. "So, I was right, then," she says. "He _was_ the lad you're always talking about. The one you were in love with at school."

Jack never mentioned De Courcy by name to those of his more recent acquaintance; he was always 'a lad in my class' or 'the lad I dormed with' when he talked about his childhood. He supposes that it mustn't be too difficult to put two and two together and come up with a regrettable, damning four upon spending time with De Courcy, however. He'd still given too much away.

"Aye," he says again; there seems little point in denying it now. "That's not why I suggested this whole courtship thing, though. I got over him years ago. To be honest, I look back and wonder what the hell I was thinking, but I guess I was just at that time in my life; you know, when you're not quite in your right mind because your humours are all in a flux and you end up falling for completely unsuitable people. Did you have anyone like that?"

"Unfortunately." Fox smiles ruefully. "She seemed so exciting and mysterious; maybe a little bit dangerous, too, but I reckoned that was just for show. Then I caught her stealing my da's savings that he kept in a sock under his mattress and she knocked me out. By the time I came round, she'd scarpered, and I haven't seen her since. Last I heard, she was wanted for kidnapping and horse theft in Hibernia."

"Well, De Courcy wasn't quite _that_ unsuitable," Jack says. "He just couldn't stand me and, well, I mostly just invented everything I thought I liked about him. I never really knew him. I don't think even Charlie really knows him; he's too standoffish for that. Too reserved."

"He's certainly not reserved when it comes to complaining," Fox says.

"He's always been a bit of a prickly arse, but when it comes to everything else?" Jack shrugs. "I've known him since we were ten, and all I can say for certain about him is that his ma's a doctor, his great-great-grandad was a Gallian wastrel, he's a brilliant mage, and he loves reading. I could tell you more about Mayhew, and I only met him a week ago.

"I've been with someone standoffish and reserved now, and it doesn't hold much appeal anymore. I'm not hankering after him and going easy on him because of it, Fox. I honestly don't think he's planning on ganging up with Mayhew and doing me in as soon as you're out of the picture."

It seems strange, talking about his history with De Courcy so openly to someone who isn't Ma or Da or Charlie – those who were there to witness his idiocy first-hand – because it was simultaneously a huge, secret part of him in his youth and also a tiny hiccough in the grand scheme of his life. Up until a month ago, it'd been all but forgotten, and De Courcy had become nothing more than an anonymous bit player in Jack's school stories – his misguided first love.

Unlike Charlie, Fox seems willing to take him at his word that he's not lovestruck again, but she's clearly unmollified, nonetheless. 

"I still don't like it, Jack," she says. "If he does turn on you, how are you going to protect yourself without your magic?"

"I can look after myself," Jack says, grimly patting the grip of his bronze sword, which is sheathed at its customary spot at his hip.

Fox laughs so heartily at that assertation that Jack's pride takes a substantial battering. Whilst he's never considered himself a master swordsman, he'd presumed that his blade skills are somewhat better than risible. Apparently, he's been deluding himself.

"I've no doubt you'd be able to hold your own against the mage, but against Mayhew? Granted, you're probably stronger than him, but…" Fox winces, then gets to her feet, holding out her hand to help Jack to his own. "Come on; we've still got a little time to get some practice in. I think you're going to need it."

* * *

By the time Fox is through with him, Jack is just as rubicund as Rob had been at the end of his own sparring session, sweating like a racehorse, and the seat of his trousers is splattered with mud, courtesy of a sneaky leg sweep from Fox which had sent him tumbling down to the ground, arse-first.

He'd had every intention of going straight to his room in order to take a bath and change into clean clothes, but doesn't even make it to the stairs before running into De Courcy, who heaves a great despairing sigh at the sight of him.

"You do remember that we're due to meet with Princess Bethan, don't you?" he says.

"Aye, of course," Jack says, and it’s not really a lie. He _hadn't_ forgotten, he'd just lost track of the time and thought he'd have at least a few minutes spare to make himself presentable. "I'll pop up to my room and—"

"There's no time for that," De Courcy says tartly. "We can't keep Her Highness waiting. You'll just have to go as is."

De Courcy himself is dressed in a black frockcoat, dark grey trousers, and spit-shined shoes – the sombre uniform he habitually wore in their later years at school. His light brown hair has been trimmed short and then slicked back so smoothly against his skull to counteract its natural curl that it looks to have been lacquered and has taken on a coppery sheen that's normally only noticeable in the summer months.

"I see you've been spending that allowance Bethan gave you," Jack says, motioning towards De Courcy's hair and then sweeping his hand down to encompass his new outfit.

"Just a portion of it," De Courcy says, sounding slightly guilty. He runs his hands down the stiff material of his lapels, nods once as though in satisfaction, and then draws himself up straight and tall, his nose held haughtily high. "One must look one's best when serving royalty, Rayner. I'm sure Her Highness will understand."

"She doesn't have much choice in the matter now, does she?" No more than Jack has any choice in serving royalty whilst looking and smelling like a particularly industrious farmhand, seemingly. Maddeningly, De Courcy is right – keeping Bethan waiting on him would be a greater insult than subjecting her to his unwashed dishevelment for a spell. "Let's get moving, then."

But despite his purported desire for haste, De Courcy hangs back, shakes his head. "Just a moment, Rayner," he says. "I, um, I bought something for you too whilst I was in Vinovia this morning. Here..."

He darts forward and thrusts a ring into Jack's hand. Like the one Jack gave De Courcy, it's made of oak, but there the similarities end. This ring is wider, heavier, polished to a gleaming lustre, and is inset with a band of lighter wood upon which a pattern of interlocking knots is carved, reminiscent of those which decorated the covers of the journals Jack used to keep at school.

"I thought it would look odd if only one of us was wearing a ring," De Courcy says.

And so it would, which is why Jack had bought himself two, not having expected De Courcy to want to play along with this farce to the extent of actually exchanging rings, as tradition dictates. But they were nothing but cheap, mass-produced crap, as he hadn't wanted to shell out too much just in case De Courcy threw them back in his face. The ring De Courcy's chosen is far finer, and exactly the sort of design Jack would have picked out himself to give to someone he actually did want to start courting. 

De Courcy always has been very invested in doing things properly, though, and doubtless that would extend to courtship, too. He wouldn't half-arse it and stand for a substandard ring. Jack will have to buy a replacement for him before they get to Eboracum. For the sake of verisimilitude.

"Is it…?" De Courcy shifts his weight anxiously from foot to foot. "Are you going to try it on? See if it fits?"

Jack doesn't expect it to, as his fingers are thick and over-sized, but the rings glides on easily, as smooth as butter.

"It's perfect," he says, lifting his hand up so De Courcy can see it better. "Thanks, De Courcy."

"I'm glad you approve." De Courcy clears his throat with a cough, courteously muffled in the crook of his elbow, and then stares off absently over Jack's shoulder towards the hallway that leads to Bethan's office. "Well, now that's out of the way, shall we go?"

* * *

Back when they were still too young to protest against the practice, Da used to take Jack and Charlie with him to court on those rare occasions that he couldn't think of a good enough excuse to wriggle out of his royal obligations.

Whilst Da paid the expected obeisance to their king, Jack and Charlie were left to 'entertain' his children. Jack had hated it fully as much as his da hated having to dress up in his finery and pretend to be amused by the snide jokes, backhanded compliments, and vicious gossip that the king's courtiers traded amongst themselves behind the king's back.

As a child, Dafydd was a bully and sly with it, always pinching and poking at Charlie to make him cry when his nurse wasn't looking, and deliberately breaking his own toys and then blaming it on Jack just to get him in trouble, because no-one would ever believe him when he protested his innocence, not when it meant calling a prince a liar.

Caerwyn, he'd found unbearably dull, as he always wanted to sit quietly and look at picture books instead of doing something more interesting like playing hide and seek or climbing up onto the palace roof, as the nurse had specifically warned them against trying to do.

Bethan was too young to be interesting, barely out of nappies at the time, and his only lasting impression of her was that she'd been a cheerful kid, always smiling and always happy to toddle about after her brothers even though they could be quite harsh in their attempts to leave her behind. 

As an adult, Bethan is softly spoken and still sweet-tempered, but she must be made of sterner stuff at her core, because she's well-prepared – in spirit, if not, as yet, in manpower – to go to war, if it does come to that.

She had seen first-hand how the royal mages had been affected by the injury inflicted on the Otherworld, and after a source amongst them – whose name she refuses to divulge – had laid the blame for it at Dafydd's feet, she had immediately turned her back on him and retreated to the summer palace to strategise and plan her next move.

She had considered joining forces with Caerwyn, but after Jack told her about his complete indifference to the Otherworld's plight, she'd made the decision then and there to take a stand against both of her brothers.

In her elaborately appointed office, seated around the mahogany desk inlaid with mother of pearl flowers, Jack, De Courcy, Elizabeth, and Bethan review their plans one final time. They are, by necessity, somewhat sparse, as Bethan has no knowledge of what Dafydd had done to the circle or even how Jack and De Courcy might reach it, given that the entrance to the caverns beneath the palace is now highly guarded on Dafydd's orders, but they discuss every other possibility, contingency, and – in case it all goes sour – potential escape route down to the last, gruelling detail.

"There's one more thing I'd like you to do for me," Bethan says when they've finally exhausted the topic. "Would you check on my father? If I could, I would have brought him with me; I'm worried about him."

"Has he taken another turn for the worse, Your Highness?" De Courcy asks.

"That's just it, I don't know," Bethan says. "These past few weeks, Dafydd hasn't let me do anything more than look at Papa from the doorway of his sickroom for a moment or two. He says Papa's too weak now for me to sit at his bedside as I used to, holding his hand and talking to him, but I know that Dafydd still visits him every day for hours at a time.

"I've begun to think that maybe there's something in that room – something about _Papa_ – that he doesn't want me to see."

"Surely you don't think…" De Courcy screws his eyes closed and inhales sharply, obviously pained by the words he's struggling to spit out. "You don't think Prince Dafydd is harming your father, do you?"

"Of course not," Bethan reassures him, just a little too quickly. "It may just be that his condition _has_ deteriorated and Dafydd was trying to spare me from that, or perhaps" – she gives a small, self-deprecating smile – "I'm worrying about nothing. I'd like to know for sure, though; set my mind at ease."

Judging by the quick, anxious glance Bethan shares with Elizabeth, the false brightness of her tone, she doesn't really believe a word of that and is just catering to De Courcy's delicate sensibilities.

Jack thinks that what she truly suspects is that her brother has poisoned their father as well as the Otherworld.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay on this chapter. Sleep has been elusive for me once more of late, so I've been extremely unproductive and got very behind on my writing/comment replying yet again.

* * *

When Jack chased De Courcy down to the ramshackle shepherd's hut in which he'd taken refuge after fleeing from Caerwyn's border patrol at the watchtower, his predominant emotion was that of relief rather than the triumph he should more rightfully have been feeling.

De Courcy's capture had been nigh on inevitable, after all, because the panicked trail he'd cut across the moors was so obvious that he may as well have been scattering signposts behind him as he ran, all pointing towards his destination. He hadn't cast even the most rudimentary of illusions in an attempt to obscure his tracks, so it'd seemed clear to Jack then that De Courcy had depleted his stored magic during his brief skirmish with the soldiers and would be practically defenceless. 

He wasn't concerned that De Courcy might be able to overpower him or evade him, but he did fear failure of a different sort, and so much so that he asked Fox to fall back and let him approach De Courcy's hideout alone. 

He'd feared that he might not be as immune to De Courcy's dubious charms as a decade-long inoculation of absence and indifference should have made him. That he'd make a fool of himself by stumbling over his words, hesitating to lay hands on him as he knew he must, and treating him with a gentleness that better became a prospective suitor than a captor.

But he suffered no resurgence of the warmer feelings that had plagued him for so many years in his adolescence. To the contrary, he couldn't imagine De Courcy as he'd appeared then stirring anything of the sort in even the tenderest and most receptive of hearts.

Dressed in his ridiculous filthy and tattered robes, he'd looked and smelt like he'd just crawled out of a midden. His hair was lank and greasy, his skin a sickly shade of corpse-grey, and yet despite it all, his manner was just supercilious as it'd ever been when he cast a disparaging eye over Jack's worn but comfortable clothes at school, as though Jack were the one dressed in rags and De Courcy, his court finery.

And he was just as querulous and demanding as a pampered noble, too – complaining loudly and at length about Jack's supposed rough handling, the tightness of the restraints Fox bound about his wrists, and, most vociferously, the substandard mount they provided for him.

Jack had taken a vicious, petty satisfaction in watching him be thrown about by Buttons' short, choppy strides thereafter, and is just as transfixed by seeing him astride Apricot now, if for entirely different reasons.

To Jack's surprise, De Courcy politely declined when Bethan offered him the use of one of her own, far steadier horses, even though they would surely have given him a much safer and more comfortable ride back to Eboracum. Apricot swerves one step sideways for every ten he takes forward, shying away from oddly shaped rocks, ominously swaying blades of grass, and even his own shadow. But De Courcy weathers his antics with aplomb, scarcely even shifting in his saddle whilst the skittish gelding lurches bodily beneath him.

He really does have an _exceedingly_ good seat. Jack tilts his head a little more to get a better look at it.

De Courcy has filled out considerably since they graduated from the College, but he wears the weight well. As a youth, he'd been so slim as to be bordering on gaunt, and though Jack had still considered him one of the most strikingly beautiful people he'd ever laid eyes on, he did privately agree with Olivia's assessment that there was something slightly elfin about his looks – something a little unworldly. The stark hollowness of his cheeks made his eyes seem too large for his face, his jawline as sharp and brittle as the finely honed edge of a razor's blade.

But the added fullness of maturity has brought balance to his features. When he first saw him again, Jack had rather uncharitably thought that De Courcy had gone to seed over the years since they parted ways and was guiltily pleased by the observation. He's since reconsidered it.

Now that De Courcy is well-dressed and immaculately buffed and polished once more, just as he used to be in their schooldays, Jack can't help but think that he has instead…

 _Blossomed_. 

The word drops like a tonne weight to the forefront of Jack's mind, leaden and inescapable. Also, somewhat disconcerting. He doesn’t normally think in such flowery terms about anyone, not even his lovers. Not for years, anyhow, ever since he outgrew his youthful habit of collecting love poems that reminded him of De Courcy and painstakingly transcribing them into his journals, headed by elaborate illuminated letters and footed by his embarrassingly earnest endeavours at adding to the verses to make the whole even more fitting to the subject of his own inspiration.

He is in sore need of distraction to prevent his thoughts from continuing any further along this poetical avenue – which, as he well knows, does not lead anywhere he wishes to travel, not now or ever again – and as De Courcy is quite out of the question when it comes to providing one, he has no recourse but to turn to Mayhew.

Mayhew had chattered to De Courcy without surcease for the first hour or so of their journey but, having received no more than the occasional nod or disinterested-sounding hum in return for his efforts, has since dropped back to ride behind him. As there's nothing to see about them but countless acres of unbroken moorland stretching out towards the horizon, he'll likely be thankful for something to distract from the tedium of it all himself.

Jack leans askew in his saddle in order to catch his eye and then beckons him over. Mayhew meets the gesture with a ready grin and spurs his horse into a trot in his alacrity to answer it.

"Did you need me for something, sir?" he asks as he reins his horse alongside Jack's, sounding almost eager at the thought.

"Just conversation," Jack says. "The road's long and, to be frank, incredibly boring."

And, given Jack's current mood, liable to be occupied with the composition of odes to De Courcy's arse if he doesn't have something else to fill the empty miles with.

Mayhew laughs. "I was just thinking the same, sir. The countryside's pretty enough, but it's far too quiet for my liking. I miss the hustle and bustle of the city something fierce. How about you, sir? Are you looking forward to going to Eboracum? Your brother told me that you haven't been back there for years."

Not since he joined Caerwyn's household. Caerwyn had never explicitly forbidden Jack from travelling to the capital, but then he hadn't needed to – he'd managed to make his disapproval of the idea perfectly plain without speaking a single word against it outright. No, he'd spoken disparagingly of the city's many worldly temptations and warningly of Dafydd's perfidious nature, and Jack had read between the lines well enough to please him. He _had_ missed his biannual visits to the College to catch up with his old teachers, but everything else of any interest Eboracum had to offer – theatres, libraries, restaurants, and galleries – could also be found in Cataractonium and Calcaria, albeit on a more modest scale.

Or so he'd told himself – consoled himself – whenever he started lingering over fond memories of the city.

"I am," he says with the same defiant spirit that had inspired him to drink far too much whisky four days previous. "Can't say I feel the same way about the palace, though. That, I'm not looking forward to at all. I've managed to avoid going for almost twenty years; I would have been happy to make it another twenty more."

Mayhew shakes his head slowly, his eyes blinking wide and perplexed. "Do you not like being at court, sir? I had wondered, seeing as how you're never there, but His Highness has always said that's because it's too long a journey for you to make on the regular."

"Well, then he's talking out of his arse." For reasons Jack can take a good guess at – likely they're the same ones that prompted Dafydd to continue sending invitations to his balls and parties throughout the years he spent in Caerwyn's service. He'd hoped to win Jack from his brother's side someday, so badmouthing him to his court and turning them against him in absentia would have run counter to his interests. "I don't go because I can't stand being there."

"You're a viscount, sir!"

"Aye, but not a particularly good one," Jack says. "I take it you enjoy it at court?"

"I love it, sir," Mayhew says, with all the passionate zeal of a fanatic. "I love the pageantry of it, and all the fine clothes and fine food, and, most of all, the people! There's hardly a day that goes by that I don't get to meet someone new. And there's always some scandal or other going on, which definitely keeps things interesting. Like… Oh! Do you know Sir George Exley? The youngest son of Lord Exley's third wife? I believe he's of an age with yourself and the High Mage."

"Vaguely," Jack says. The name brings to mind dim recollections of protracted tantrums over the equitable division of cream buns, though he assumes that Sir George will have learnt some measure of restraint since he was six. "We played together a few times when we were kids."

"Well, he's on the outs with his wife because she wants to add a third to their marriage," Mayhew says, leaning conspiratorially close to Jack, his voice dropping low.

"That's not everyone's cup of tea." Jack can certainly understand the sentiment. "I'm guessing it's not his?"

"Oh, no, he's all for the idea," Mayhew says. "He's just got a different lady in mind."

"Then why not make it a _ménage à quatre_?"

"That right there's the problem, sir. The third and the fourth, their families are feuding. Some say it's a debt of honour dating back to the invasion, others a bad deal on a racehorse that their great-great-grandfathers made. No-one can remember for sure, but that doesn't stop them from hating each other."

"See? This is _exactly_ what I don't like about court," Jack says. "Someone always finds out your private business and starts spreading it around. You've got me doing it now and we're not even there yet!"

"I wouldn't really call it private, sir," Mayhew says placatingly. "There's barely a ball that goes by where the four of them don't end up getting into a shouting match about it out in the gardens. Though, you're right; there's little people at court like to do better than gossip." His expression gentles with compassion. "Sorry to say, but there's probably going to be a lot of talk about you and the High Mage, sir. Especially given the circumstances; what with the two of you claiming to be courting and all. I imagine that's going to cause quite the stir, because it's, um… He's not..."

"He's not the courting type?" Jack finishes for him when he stumbles into silence. "Aye, he did mention that it'd likely come as a bit of a shock to some."

"He did?" Mayhew shoots an incredulous look in De Courcy's direction. "I must say I'm surprised, sir. I never would have thought he'd come right out and tell you, just like that. He usually tries to keep that sort of thing under his hat as best he can. I mean, there've been rumours for years – of course there have – but he just ignores them; never says anything about them to anyone, either way. I only know for sure myself because he got so raddled last Yuletide that he forgot himself and bent my ear over it."

Jack follows Mayhew's gaze towards De Courcy, riding a fair distance ahead of them now. Not far enough to have missed overhearing Mayhew's words, if his stiff-backed, hunch-shouldered posture is anything to go by. He looks distinctly uncomfortable, which Jack can sympathise with. He'd feel much the same way if it was his personal life being dissected right behind his back.

"Aside from the love affairs, what else has been happening at court these past few years?" he asks, hoping to redirect Mayhew's conversation to less distressful matters.

Fortunately, the topic is one dear enough to Mayhew's heart that he has sufficient to say on the subject that it sees them through an early luncheon hurriedly shovelled down at the side of the road, and well on into the afternoon.

* * *

  
  


When darkness begins to fall, they stop at the next inn they come across so they can take dinner, rest their horses, and hopefully find a comfortable spot to lay their heads down for the night. It's a run-down, sprawling affair, packed to the rafters inside with farmers, shepherds, and carriage drivers. Jack and De Courcy stick out like sore thumbs in their frockcoats and breeches, which earns them suspicious glowers from the locals and deferential treatment from the serving girl, who ushers them towards a well-polished table set hearthside in the snug which is clearly reserved for those who look as though they have more than coppers to spend.

She brings them all mugs of beer, then shortly thereafter plates of the only hot food that the place has to offer this late in the evening: lamb chops with mint sauce, boiled potatoes, and fried cabbage.

The meat is dry and shrivelled, the potatoes floury, and the cabbage almost colourless, but as they haven't eaten for almost eight hours, it looks no less appetising for any of it to Jack. Mayhew, too, must be ravenous, as he digs straight in in the same instant his plate hits the table.

De Courcy stares at his own plate with the selfsame expression of horror he'd levelled against the courtship ring Jack gave him.

The serving girl, still hovering alongside the table, diffidently asks him, "Is something wrong, sir?"

De Courcy looks up at her, gaze flitting quickly between her furrowed brow, the anxious twist of her lips, and her white-knuckled hands, clutching tight at the stained fabric of her half apron.

"No," he says. "Not at all. Everything looks lovely, thank you."

And then he smiles. It happens so very rarely in Jack's presence that he forgets the extent to which it transforms his face, teasing dimples to his cheeks and lending brilliancy to his already bright eyes. 

Jack has always found the effect dazzling, and the serving girl appears stunned by it, too. She blushes, dips into an unsteady curtsey and swiftly thereafter a bow, then bounds away back to the bar with an energetic spring in her step.

De Courcy, as ever, seems oblivious. As soon as she departs, his disgruntled sneer returns and he pokes disconsolately at his potatoes with the flat of his knife.

Mayhew, seated beside him, digs a jocular elbow into his ribs. "I bet you'll be glad to get back to M. Bernard's cooking, won't you, sir," he says.

"I'm counting down the minutes, believe me," De Courcy says with a heartfelt sigh.

He eats only a few morsels of his main course, but polishes off every last speck and smear of the sticky toffee pudding and custard that follows, displaying a late-developing sweet tooth that he'd lacked when they were at school, where he'd always left his afters untouched.

Mayhew pushes aside his own scraped-clean bowl and says, "I should see about booking you a room for the night, sir."

De Courcy's eyebrows arc high. "We'll need at least two rooms, surely."

"Naw, you're courting now, aren't you?" Mayhew grins. "You'd be expected to share."

"Traditionally, a courting couple wouldn't… progress matters to the bedchamber until the sixth month at the very earliest," De Courcy counters.

"No-one follows _all_ the old rules nowadays, sir. I think that one's probably the first to go by the wayside."

"I would!" De Courcy says. "I'd want to do things properly." 

Right down to giving the correct, appointed gifts for each month of the year, no doubt; even the paper and glassware most people don't even bother with anymore. De Courcy's notion of 'proper' is almost as inflexible as he's always purported his mother's to be, in Jack's experience.

"Besides, no-one here knows Rayner and I are supposed to be courting," De Courcy continues. "Nor are they likely to care even if they did!"

"They've definitely noticed your rings, sir," Mayhew says. "I heard the serving girl talking to the barman about them when I went to buy our last round."

"Oh?" De Courcy lightly rubs his right thumb over the ring on his left hand, as if confirming for himself it's still there. "Really? Well… Well, that changes nothing." He folds his arms firmly across his chest. "I still won't do it."

It soon transpires that they don't have much choice in the matter, as the inn only has the one room free, regardless.

"You and Mage Rayner should take it, sir," Mayhew says after imparting that dire news. "I'll bed down in the stables."

"I can't ask that of you, Mayhew," De Courcy says.

"You're not asking me, though, are you, sir," Mayhew says. "I'm telling you that's where I'm going to be sleeping, if you happen to need me during the night." He retrieves his saddlebags from beneath the table and then nods to De Courcy and Jack in turn. "Good night, High Mage. Mage Rayner. Sweet dreams, and I'll see you both in the morning."

"We'll have to get used to sharing again once we're back in Eboracum, anyway," De Courcy says gloomily once Mayhew has left the snug. "Might as well get a head start on it, I suppose." He gulps down the remainder of his beer. "I'm going to go to our room. I hope you'll do me the courtesy of waiting ten minutes or so before following, Rayner."

He'll doubtless take the opportunity to put on his nightshirt. He's always been very particular about having complete privacy when he's changing his clothes – Jack once walked in on him in his shirtsleeves at school and he'd reacted like he'd been caught stark bollock naked and pleasuring himself to a portrait of Master Hainsworth.

Accordingly, Jack takes his time over finishing his own beer, giving De Courcy at least twice the time he'd asked for before heading up to the inn's second floor.

De Courcy still startles when he enters the room – almost tripping over the hem of his nightshirt when he wheels around to face him, one hand pressed to his throat as if to hold back a gasp or even a scream at the sight.

The nightshirt isn't the aged, yellowing garment Charlie had found him to wear at the lodge; that, he had likely taken great delight in leaving behind him at the summer palace.

This one is startlingly white, obviously new-bought, and of an old-fashioned cut: the high, lace-trimmed collar brushing the underside of his chin, the bottom edge falling almost to the floor. Only the very tips of his toes are visible beneath it. When he notices Jack looking at them, he curls them in towards the balls of his feet, digging down against the dusty floorboards.

"As you can see, there's only one bed. It's very narrow, so I thought one of us should take the sofa over there," he says, sweeping his arm out to direct Jack's attention to the – equally narrow – sofa set beneath the room's one small window. 

"Sounds good," Jack says. "Any preferences?"

"The bed, of course, but that's hardly fair," De Courcy says. "Maybe we should flip a coin?"

"Naw, you're reet, De Courcy," Jack says. "I'm so knackered I could probably fall asleep on the dung heap by the stables if needs be. The sofa will be fine."

"Oh." De Courcy frowns. "Well, if you're sure…"

"Quite sure."

"Then I'll set up the sofa whilst you" – De Courcy waves a hand towards the saddlebags slung over Jack's shoulder – "do what you need to do."

He keeps his back conscientiously turned against Jack all the while as Jack changes into his own nightshirt, and by the time Jack has finished washing his face and brushing his teeth at the small, cracked washbasin in the back corner of the room, De Courcy is tucked up tightly in the bed with only the very top of his head still on view.

He's laid out a pillow and two of the blankets from the bed on the sofa, and Jack slips beneath them gratefully. The sofa's cushions are horribly lumpy and sag down low beneath his weight, but he's exhausted enough that he can't imagine that it'll disturb his sleep unduly. And neither will De Courcy, thankfully, whom Jack already knows sleeps, quite literally, like the dead – laid straight out on his back, hands lightly resting on his chest, silent and unmoving. In their first year at the College, Rhys had been so worried that he might have carked it one night that he'd held a mirror under his nose to check he was still breathing.

But when De Courcy turns out the lamp on the little table by his bed, he spends a good ten minutes or more afterwards thrashing about, tossing and turning, the bedframe rattling beneath him.

The torrent of noise eventually slows, stops, and then De Courcy sighs out into the dark: "Rayner, would you mind if I turned the lamp back on for a spell? I'll keep the flame low, but I'd like to be able to read for a while if I can. It helps me settle; I don't sleep very well in strange beds."

He used to do that at school, too, but he used a ball of mage-fire to illuminate the pages then, bobbing at his shoulder beneath his quilt.

"We've got another long ride ahead of us tomorrow, so just do what you need to, De Courcy," Jack says. "It'll be fine."

And so it turns out to be. The warm orange glow of the lamp seeping through Jack's closed eyelids and the quiet rustling of paper as De Courcy leafs through his book are achingly familiar – reminiscent of the nights they once spent together in their dorm room in a way that Jack finds oddly comforting and soon lulls him to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay on this chapter. It's been a chaotic last few months for me, and I haven't been feeling very creative as a consequence.

* * *

Jack doesn’t have time or the chance to buy either a new ring for De Courcy or to restock any of the little essentials he’s since realised he forgot to include when he hurriedly packed his saddlebags at the very last moment before they were due to set out from the Summer Palace. 

As they pass by the old Roman marker stone set two miles outside Eboracum, two soldiers dressed in Dafydd's colours ride out of the sparse woodland at the ride of the road to greet them. They hail De Courcy by name, acknowledge Mayhew with curt nods, and subject Jack to twin narrow-eyed glares laden with considerable suspicion. There are basket-hilted swords strapped to their horses' saddles, with elaborately coiled crossguards and huge trillion cut gemstones set in their pommels. Ceremonial swords – the soldiers are not anticipating a fight or even prepared for one. 

Jack relaxes the hand that had wrapped reflexively around the grip of his own sword at the sight of them, letting it fall away to rest, open-palmed and empty, against his thigh.

"His Highness sent us to escort you to the palace, High Mage," the older of the soldiers says, inclining her head respectfully towards De Courcy.

"Well, this is an honour," De Courcy says, though the flatness of his voice suggests that he considers it nothing of the sort. "Most unexpected." He glances slantwise at Jack and hitches one shoulder infinitesimally higher in a barely-there shrug. "Unprecedented, even."

"His Highness thought it would be safer, sir," the soldier says. "Lots of dangerous sorts out on the roads these days."

That lie would almost be plausible on any other road but this one, which is close enough to the capital as to be both regularly patrolled by the city guard and well-lit by magical lampposts maintained by the King's cadre. Jack rather suspects that Dafydd wants to hurry them on their way now they're practically in spitting distance of the palace, or else he needs to ensure that they don't stray off course and go wandering around Eboracum unaccompanied.

Dafydd is far from a seasoned, or even competent, strategist, but even he would know to send more soldiers, better outfitted, if he meant to take them prisoner. Whatever his true motivations for arranging this scarcely armed escort, they must be relatively benign.

Jack returns De Courcy's shrug, and tells the soldiers, "Lead on, then."

They ignore him and don't stir until De Courcy repeats the order in the same, imperious tone he used to complain about draughty windows and uncomfortable mattresses back at the lodge. Then, they fall into place either side of De Courcy, taking up a good half of the road and forcing Jack and Mayhew into riding behind them when they set off at a brisk trot.

"Someone must have recognised us at the inn last night and sent word on to His Highness that we were coming," Mayhew says to Jack in a whisper, barely audible above the pounding of their horses' hooves. "Or maybe…" He swallows hard. "Maybe it was someone at the Summer Palace, sir."

"Maybe so," Jack agrees, "but it doesn't much matter if was, in any case. We were hardly laying low, were we? I'd be more surprised if Dafydd didn't already know we'd been staying there, to be honest. Don't worry about it; De Courcy and I have worked out a story to explain that, if he asks."

Mayhew doesn't look particularly reassured. "But what about the rest of it, sir? You know" – he mouths the next words – "the courtship thing?"

Jack spent the last few days of his sojourn at the Summer Palace loudly singing De Courcy's praises to all and sundry, and generally acting like a besotted fool at every available opportunity. De Courcy had predictably declined to play along to any greater extent than intermittently cracking a half-hearted smile in Jack's vicinity, but given his habitually dour demeanour, it was tantamount to penning sonnets in Jack's name.

As even Rob was taken in enough by their performance to offer his congratulations on the supposedly happy occasion, if there _are_ any spies in Bethan's household, Jack's confident that they'll have been persuaded that his courtship with De Courcy is a real one, despite their wooden rings being a regrettably late addition to it.

"Don't worry about that, either," Jack says. "I think we can put up a pretty convincing show of it."

"I hope you're right, sir," Mayhew says with a heavy sigh. "I really do. There's no telling how His Highness will react, otherwise. If he reckons you're trying to pull the wool over his eyes, we might still find ourselves getting locked up in the dungeons, after all."

* * *

The soldiers remain plastered close to De Courcy's side until they fetch up at the front door of the palace whereupon they pass him off into the care of a waiting footman, who bows obsequiously low and then bombards him with a rapid-fire barrage of questions as he leads them inside the building.

Does the High Mage require anything to eat? To drink? Does he have any luggage that needs to be taken up to his chambers? Does he want to meet with his cadre? Should they be convened? And if so where? In the library, or his office, or even his private garden, seeing as though it's _such_ a fine day?

De Courcy shakes his head and declines all of it. "I'd just like to go to my rooms and rest for a while," he says. "Recover from our journey."

"Of course, sir. Of course," the footman says. "His Highness thought that you would, sir, but he did request that Mage Rayner meet with him before you retire."

"He did?" De Courcy's eyebrows twitch upwards – a staccato jump of surprise that fleetingly mars his otherwise studiedly impassive expression. "Just… Mage Rayner, or does he wish to speak with me, as well?"

"Just Mage Rayner, sir," the footman says, sounding slightly rueful. "If you'd like to follow me, sir" – he turns to look directly at Jack for the first time, bobbing his head in a cursory approximation of a bow – "I'll take you to His Highness' office."

Jack expects De Courcy to object, to insist on being included and not take no for an answer, but he accepts this apparent snub with a placid, "Very well," and then, nodding towards an ornately carved wooden bench set at the far end of the entrance hall, he adds, "We'll wait over there for you, Jack."

It had taken Jack and Mayhew the best part of the morning to persuade De Courcy that it would seem odd at best, suspicious at worst, if a supposed courting couple referred to each other solely by their surnames as though they were still schoolboys doggedly practising the courtesies that the rest of their classmates never bothered with.

Jack's given name sounds no less unnatural coming from his lips, though. He overemphasises the ending plosive, as though he's giving a hacking cough to clear his throat of something that's irritating it. Clearly, that's something they're going to have to work on.

If the footman finds anything unusual in De Courcy's diction, he gives no sign of it; in fact, De Courcy seems to have been all but forgotten, and he doesn't spare him so much as another glance before pivoting smartly on his heel and marching away, obviously eager to deliver Jack to Dafydd as he'd been instructed to now that all the other polite formalities are safely out of the way.

He leads the way along a succession of long, gilded corridors that Jack vaguely recalls from his childhood to a room that was once the King's second-best study. His smart rap at the closed door there is answered not by another servant but Dafydd himself, who smiles expansively upon seeing Jack standing without, revealing the full, shark-like breadth of his sharp white teeth. 

He dismisses the footman with a flick of his wrist, and then draws Jack into the room with an arm hooked around his shoulders, as though he's an old friend come calling – which would be a fine show of camaraderie were his hand not tightly clawed around the top of Jack's arm, fingers digging deep into the muscle there.

He bodily manoeuvres Jack into taking a seat in the chair set in front of his desk before releasing him from this crushing grip. Then, he takes a step back and looks Jack over, his gaze sliding languidly, lingeringly, up the entire length of his body.

There's nothing appreciative about it; Dafydd's eyes are hard and sharp, evaluative in a way that makes Jack's skin crawl because it feels as though he's a piece of livestock being sized up before an auction. Knowing Dafydd, that's exactly the reaction he means to evoke, though, and not wanting give him the satisfaction of knowing he's succeeded, Jack forces himself to remain completely still under the weight of that cold regard and not squirm away from it as is his instinctive response. 

"It's good to see you again, Jonathan," Dafydd says, when his eyes finally complete their slow journey back to Jack's face.

"Jack," Jack reminds him.

Dafydd's nose wrinkles in distaste and he doesn't correct himself. "Would you like a drink?" he asks, picking up a crystal decanter from his desk and inclining it towards Jack so that the amber liquid it contains sloshes about enticingly within.

"Thanks, but it's a bit early in the day for me," Jack says.

"I seem to remember that you weren't quite so moderate in your younger days," Dafydd says. "Is this newfound restraint my brother's doing?" He pours himself a glass from the decanter and then perches on the edge of his desk. "How is Caerwyn, by the way?"

"Much the same as he always is, I suppose," Jack says, shrugging.

Dafydd laughs. "Pompous, overbearing, and self-righteous, then. And now it seems you've finally grown tired of that."

Jack's pulse jitters nervously, his heart racing. He and De Courcy had, inevitably, disagreed about the finer points of the tale they were going to spin for Dafydd concerning Jack's defection. De Courcy was insistent that Jack should thoroughly denounce Caerwyn to his brother, but Jack is resolute in his opinion that a more measured approach would be best. More believable. He hopes he's right.

"Not exactly," he says. "I just got a better offer."

"Ah, yes." Dafydd glances at the ring on Jack's left hand. "From my High Mage, no less."

Jack readies himself to trot out the invented history he'd concocted to explain his courtship with De Courcy – childhood sweethearts, rekindled romance, et cetera, et cetera – but Dafydd's interest in the matter already seems to have reached its end.

"And how's my dear sister faring?" he asks. "I understand you recently spent some time with her, too."

"Aye, that was my idea," Jack says. "Florian" – he's no better than De Courcy and stumbles over the name, giving it an extra syllable in the course of correcting himself – "didn't think much of it, though, so we didn't stay long. He wanted to get back here as soon as possible."

Dafydd waves all this aside as though it's of no consequence at all. "But Bethan is doing well, I hope?"

"Aye, she's okay. I—"

"Good." Dafydd drains his glass in a single, long swallow, and then slams it down onto the desk beside him. "Well, I'm glad you're here at last, no matter the circumstances. You know there's always been a place open for you in my cadre. Once you've settled in with your… beau, I hope you'll finally take it up."

"I'll certainly think about it," Jack says, even though he has no intention of doing so, whether he ends up being stuck here, playing at courting De Courcy, for two weeks, two months, or even – gods forbid – two years.

"Good," Dafydd says again, slapping him heartily on the shoulder. A brusque handshake follows, and there the audience which Jack had been dreading from the moment he set out from the Summer Palace draws to a close, so painlessly that he can only think that it must be a trap of some kind.

But when Dafydd opens the office door again to send Jack on his way, there are no guards waiting to pounce on him and drag him off to the palace dungeons, just the footman, who returns him with promptitude to the entrance hall.

De Courcy is there seated on the bench he'd pointed out earlier, tapping the heels of his boots in an anxiously brisk rhythm against the marble-tiled floor below. He jumps to his feet as soon as Jack approaches him but doesn't speak until the footman has taken his leave of them.

He then asks in an undertone, "How did it go?"

"Easier than it should have been," Jack says. "Which makes me suspicious. I think we're going to need to be very careful."

"Of course," De Courcy says. "Well, we should…" He pauses. Smooths out his lapels, straightens his cuffs, and then runs his fingers back through his hair, which leaves it sticking out in all directions from his head. "Mayhew's gone to see his father. I told him he should take the rest of the day off. Make the most of it."

"Right," Jack says.

"So, I…" De Courcy flattens his hair again with another pass of his hands, and then stares down at his feet as he says, "I suppose I'll show you up to my rooms."

Dafydd's cadre is housed in the palace's southern tower, but not, De Courcy tells Jack as they walk there, on the topmost floors as they used to be in his predecessor's day. One of his first acts as High Mage had been to relocate their living quarters to the fourth floor, bringing them within easier distance of the library on the second floor, and the laboratory and offices on the third.

He presents this as a purely practical move, designed to encourage his mages towards spending more time at their research and studies, but Jack is inclined to think his concerns were more physical than cerebral.

The stone spiral staircase which runs through the centre of the tower is perilously steep, and the long muscles in Jack's thighs are already aching before they've even left the third floor. Trudging all the way up to the top of it, day in, day out, is a trial he wouldn't want to subject himself to if he had any choice in the matter, either, and he likely would have made exactly the same decision, just as swiftly, had he been the one in De Courcy's place.

On the fourth floor, the staircase opens out into a wide, plushly carpeted hallway with six identical dark mahogany doors leading off it. De Courcy moves to the closest one, lays his left hand flat against the wood and curls his right around the doorhandle, though he doesn't turn it. Instead, he takes a deep breath, his shoulders slumping and his back rounding into a tense arc.

"Are you okay, De Courcy?" Jack asks, eyeing him warily. His face is an unhealthy, cadaverous shade of pale, and he's swaying a little on his feet, as though he might be on the verge of passing out. 

"Just a bit winded," De Courcy assures him, his voice wavering. "I need to—" He bites back whatever he was about to say mid-word, and then shakes his head, firm and determined. "No. No, I'll be fine." Abruptly straightening up from his slouch, he pushes open the door with a sharp shove. "Please, come in."

At school, De Courcy always scrupulously tidied his desk the instant he finished working at it, stowed away his clothes as soon as they were returned from being laundered, and made his bed whilst he was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes of a morning. He didn't tear interesting engravings out of newspapers and periodicals and tack them to the walls as Rhys and Jack did. He never brought any little mementoes from home or souvenirs from his holidays to set out on top of his chest of drawers. When he was absent from the room, he left no trace behind to betray that he even lived there at all.

Jack had imagined that his quarters at the palace would be kept along the same orderly and impersonal lines, but he'd been wrong. Badly wrong.

The walls of the bedroom they step into are so densely covered with paintings that there's hardly a scrap of wallpaper left on view. There are a few still lifes dotted amongst them, a smattering of pastoral scenes, but for the most part this haphazardly hung collection is made up of old-fashioned portraits of Battle Mages, replete with outlandishly coloured robes and venerable beards.

The mantlepiece is coated in an accretion of knick-knacks – porcelain animals, enamelled vases, wooden puzzle boxes, and the like – arranged in regimented lines, three deep, and the small breakfast table, set between the display cabinet stuffed full to bursting with mismatched tea sets and the chaise longue piled end to end with cushions, has been rendered unfit for purpose by an infestation of silver candlesticks and more carriage clocks than any one person could ever conceivably have need of, all of them stopped.

The sills of the room's two tall, arched windows are home to a verdant forest of potted plants, the writing desk, a glittering array of crystal balls and golden scrying bowls of the sort that were sold in the more unsavoury type of apothecary – inscribed all over with runes that looked striking but were functionally useless, as De Courcy surely knew.

The only uncluttered part of the entire room – the single point of similarity with their old dorm – is the canopied bed, which is furnished only with a sensible number of pillows with crisp, white cases and a dark blue quilt, tidily turned back. Jack finds himself transfixed by the incongruity of it. 

"Only one bed again," De Courcy says apologetically, obviously misinterpreting his rigidly held gaze as one of dismay. "But, well, we can… We'll sort out the practicalities somehow, I suppose." He rocks his weight forward onto his toes and then back again, the heels of his boots clicking smartly against the polished floorboards. "So, over there" – he motions towards the two doors on the right-hand side of the room – "are my dressing room and bathroom. And _that_ …." 

He hesitates momentarily, eyes narrowed and brow creased in thought, and then beckons for Jack to follow him to the leftmost door. "This is my private library," he says as he throws it open.

Unlike the attached bedroom, the library looks exactly as Jack expected it should: lined on all sides by floor to ceiling bookcases, each and every inch of them packed seamlessly tight with neatly organised, leather-bound tomes. The top of the desk in the centre of the room is empty save for an inkwell and blotting pad.

"I only keep about half of my collection in here," De Courcy says, his eyes gleaming with proprietary pride as he looks around the crowded shelves. "The thaumatological texts are stored in my office downstairs. You're free to borrow anything that catches your fancy, unless your fancy happens to extend to the cabinet by the desk. Those volumes are off limits, I'm afraid."

Intrigued, Jack wanders over to take stock of the contents of the cabinet, just to see what he's missing out on. Not that much, it transpires, as it only contains four shelves, each one housing a single book. The third one down is _My Travels with the Fae_.

"You've still got the book I gave you for your coming of age," he says wonderingly. Somehow, it seems strange to see it there, all these years later, no matter how happy De Courcy had appeared to be when he received it.

"Of course I have," De Courcy says, sounding puzzled. "I told you at the time that I'd treasure it. It's one of the rarest books I own. Priceless."

Not priceless: worth exactly five pounds and half a summer spent shovelling pig shit and being bellowed at and condescended to by Da's tenant farmer, George Turner. Jack had considered it well worth the cost at the time, as it earned him his second true smile – and second swear word – from De Courcy. If he allowed himself to dwell on it any longer, he'd probably discover that he still did. 

But he doesn't; he stands up from his crouch in front of the cabinet, deliberately turns his back on it, and asks De Courcy, "Do you want to go take a look at this guard Dafydd's set on the circle now, or—"

He's interrupted by a knock on De Courcy's closed bedroom door, and a woman's voice calling out, "High Mage? Are you in there?"

De Courcy smiles to hear it. "That's Mage Harrison," he says when Jack looks at him questioningly. "The one person here beside Mayhew I think we may be able to trust."

**Author's Note:**

> I've just noticed that _For the Crown_ is now my most kudosed fic! (As I mentioned in its endnotes, I'm absolutely blown away by the response to it!) Thank you so much to everyone who read it and supported me along the way as I was writing it, and I really hope you'll enjoy this sequel, too!


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